On view from November 14, 2025 to March 14, 2026
‘One morning in late June, I received an email. Sònia Villegas was preparing an exhibition of Ramon Herreros — the first in a long time. Just a few days earlier, I had been at the studio with him, choosing the paintings. A friend and I helped them move the works, listening to why one painting was chosen and another was not. The email was from her. She was asking me to write the text for the exhibition catalogue. My first reaction was surprise, followed by doubt. I mentioned it to Ramon, and he told me that if I felt like doing it, I should. In the more than forty years that Ramon has been exhibiting, no one had ever asked me to write a text. It made sense to me — I am too close to his work and to him. But that was precisely what had led Sònia to think of me. In the end, I accepted.’
With these words, Nuria Vidal, film critic and partner of the Barcelona-born artist, brings Ramon Herreros: La tierra está desierta y vacía (The Earth is deserted and empty) to a close. Since 1982, when the artist began to sketch fluttering movements in figurative art, although he reaffirmed his abstraction with the presentation of El axioma de María at the Maeght Gallery in Barcelona 10 years later, the serenity of strong and courageous women, an absolutely naturalistic touch and dreamlike sensuality have made their way with grace and elegance to the present day.
‘The eleven paintings presented at El Principal de Còrsega have been carefully selected to show the evolution of a painting style that moved from abstraction to figuration, without ever losing its recognizable and personal character. The oldest work is from 1989, an abstraction in which the desire for figuration already flutters — a black sheet floating at the top. There is another abstract painting, from 1992; it is one of the pieces from El axioma de María, an evocative title from a series presented at Galeria Maeght in Barcelona that same year.
Two paintings from the 1990s represent the leap from abstraction to figuration. They are figurative works, yet far from naturalistic. La espera – I (1995) shows a woman seated in emptiness, reading a book. Two colours dominate the composition: the grey tones of the background, against which the illuminated figure who waits stands out. La tierra está desierta y vacía (1997) is, to me, one of the most important pieces in Ramon’s oeuvre. The sleeping woman who dreams, wrapped in an earth-coloured mantle beneath a palm tree on a blue background, is one of his most mysterious and fascinating works.
La ofrenda de Turín – IV (2001) is one of his most serene paintings. You would never tire of looking at that sleeping dog at the feet of a calm, seated woman. In contrast, the two paintings titled Alicia (2002–2003) are bold portraits of a woman proud of being one — a woman whose power and strength Ramon captures perfectly.
If figuration was already fluttering in the first painting, in Constelaciones (2004) it is abstraction that seeks to break through, in a magical combination of a pomegranate — the most sacred fruit — and the constellation of Orion, shining in the spring night sky. Magic, mystery, something sacred — that is what we see, from its very title, in La cazadora de rocas (2003–2004), a physical, tangible painting where the sensuality and humanity of the model rest upon the structural solidity of a rock.
The last two paintings chosen for this exhibition are from 2011 and 2013. They are architectural works. Monasterio de Leyre invites one to speak in silence and to take shelter beneath the black tree, perhaps while listening to a distant Gregorian chant. El árbol filosófico brings together the square form of a building and the organic form of a barren tree; the conjunction fully justifies the title of the piece.
I am not an art critic; that is why my approach to painting is emotional — even sentimental. I am deeply grateful to Sònia for having chosen these paintings, and for giving me the opportunity to share thoughts that, until now, I had kept to myself. This is not an anthological exhibition, nor does it aim to be, but it is one that returns to the public the many Ramon Herreros that have existed over these forty years. Those who know him will recognize him; those who discover him for the first time may never forget him.